Art-like things and pointless photography

My two fans will know that today's title is one of my regular post labels. It's typically me, really. My doodles? I can't think of them as art, so they become art-like things. My photography? Well, I'm not being modest when I say that it's pointless. It's meant to be pointless. I've been doing it with a little autofocus camera that's (more than) a few years and 10, 000 photos old now, and while it's been a good little camera there's no doubt that it has limitations. That's been part of the fun, really. A lot of the photos you see here on the blog are the result of me trying to fool the camera into doing things that it doesn't think it can do. What can I say? I like playing with futility.

I also like taking pictures. I've liked it since I was a kid with a 110 camera. Um... for those of you out there who don't actually remember film cameras (sigh), here's what I mean. I took loads of pictures with that and a few other cameras. Dad even taught me the basics of f-stops and shutter speeds with his Pentax. I loved taking photos... until I was old enough to pay for my own developing.

Ouch.

Boys and girls, photography used to be expensive.

I still took pictures after that, but not quite as... extensively, shall we say. I still took pictures, and my parents bought me a nice Minolta SLR in high school for the trip to France that wasn't (our school trip supervisor used a flimsy excuse to back out at the last minute, so we never got to go. I've still never been to Europe. Thanks a lot, Teacher-who's-pointless-to-mention-since-she's-dead-now). The camera got used, though. I took it on tour with my university choir, and if you look through my photo albums you can even see the barest beginnings of my current (weird) photographic point of view. Only the barest, though. We're still talking film cameras here, and I couldn't really afford to waste money on experiments.

But then. Oh, then.

Digital, baby.

As many  pictures as you wanted, and you could see them without paying the local film lab.

Awesome.

First, I played around with the 1M jobby that my father bought once the units became less expensive (and faster. How many of you out there remember how slooow digital cameras were at first? The one we had at work -- for a nature centre -- couldn't have taken a picture of an animal unless it was stuffed). A few years later, I was given the Lumix I have now. 3M, Leica lens, tiny screen, no image stabilisation or anything fancy like that, but I've sure enjoyed it. My dad currently has a... 5M, I want to say... autofocus that I've used a few times, but the vast majority of the pictures I've taken in the past few years have been with the Lumix. As a bonus, by the way, images from a 3M camera don't take up too much of the limited memory space that Blogger offers for their in-house image hosting, so even after all these years of pointless blog photos I haven't had to switch to linking from my Flickr account (which so far hasn't even been used, so don't bother looking for it) or anything like that.

I wonder how that's going to change now?





I GOT A CAMERA FOR CHRISTMAS!

Of course, anyone with half a brain who read yesterday's post had probably guessed that already. Or anyone with less than half of a brain who's been reading this one.

Yours Pointlessly has officially entered the world of DSLRs, folks. I'm debating on whether to give you the specs of the thing (although it'll be pretty easy to find that out from the Exif data once I start posting photos from the camera), but let's just say that it's considered an "entry level" camera (which is plenty for the kind of puttering around that I do) that I see has some decent reviews. It came with the pretty standard 18-55mm zoom, and I expect that I'll be saving my pennies for a macro in the nearest possible future.

Yep. I'm actually going to have to start thinking about photography again instead of just point-and-shooting it. I'm reeeally rusty on SLRs at this point, but the advantage of today's cameras and their automatic features is that I'll be able to use the camera even while I'm still figuring it out.

I have to say, I'm looking forward to actually being able to focus a shot the way I want to. I haven't done that for a long time. And I must admit, there's something very satisfying about feeling a shutter snap when you take a picture, rather than just hearing a computer simulation.

So when will you be seeing my first efforts? There's a question. The camera didn't come with a cable (which, wtf company-that-I-haven't-named-yet? You can't be bothered to include a cable? It was bad enough when they started doing that with DVD players), and the card reader on this computer has never worked properly. It'll probably have to wait at least until I can get in to work, I guess. By then, though, I might even manage to have something worth looking at.

Or maybe I should make it completely pointless, just to show you that better equipment doesn't change the weirdness of the photographer.

Either way, I'm feeling -- as I said yesterday -- royally spoiled, but at least it's spoiled with something that will be put to good use. Or pointless use. But use all the same.



Poor blog. What are you in for?